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Stanford Adds School District Retirement Data to Its Pension Tracker

Stanford University has updated its pension tracker data for 2017, adding state retirement data from all California school districts for the first time.

The new information was unveiled at a webinar Friday.

“We hadn’t covered school districts before,” said Stanford professor Joe Nation (Marin Independent Journal). “So we now cover 3,400 total agencies in the state, including 1,700 school districts — and all of those in Marin.”

With school districts included, California’s total pension debt was $1.052 trillion as of 2017 by Stanford’s standards.

The situation is about to get worse, Nation warned. Mandated school district employer contributions will increase from 8.25% in 2014 to 19.1% in 2020 under a 2014 law.

These five school districts have the most pension debt per household.

1. Oro Grande Elementary School District ($357,677 per household)
2. Mattole Unified School District ($82,156 per household)
3. Hickman Elementary ($79,083 per household)
4. New Jerusalem Elementary School District ($61,116 per household)
5. Maple Elementary School District ($54,273 per household)